Story Time

I went to one of the oldest pubs in the region called O’Connors to chew me down a pint of Guinness and burn my throat with a shot of Jameson. The place felt alive. Pubs are part of culture here, music is part of culture here, and when the two combine it provides an atmosphere that I haven’t seen in many bars in the states. A three person band played traditional Irish music in the background and I couldn’t help but think eat your heart out mother. Another night a few of us ventured to another pub called Cane’s with someone from the local church. I hope not too many people are reading this blog wondering if their support money is going to feeding my beer habits in the streets of Ireland cause that’s not the case. I’m just trying to describe a part of culture here that I love and often gets labeled as only a drunk’s territory which isn’t always the case.

Anywho, I went to Cane’s with my man-crush Jonathan from one of our teams whose massive beard and Bear Grylls like skills of catching fish and making stoves out of pepsi cans builds jealousy in my belly. This time a seven person band played the music, but every now and again they would quite the crowd and a man with a deep Irish brogue would sing a traditional song. We pretended to know the words singing along when it made sense to.

Sidenote: I met a man from Hungary working on the streets that spoke exactly like Borat and it took everything within me not to talk back to him like that. He was great though. He was in between jobs and working on collecting donations for a group similar to what Salvation Army might do at Christmas. After talking to him for maybe ten minutes I tried to give a small two euro donation for the cause. He said, “For you, eeemm, no donation.” But I would like to, I said. “Ok, yes, maybe you give one penny then. Just one penny.” How about I give a two cent piece one for you and one for me. “Yes, that is good.” That man was awesome. His beard was grand.

My team has been going around the city and trying to take off some of the stupid graffiti downtown. Not the cool Banksy (google referance if needed) type stuff, just the dumb I like bubbly-letters-tag-everything-in-gang-type crap. Two kids actually thought that we were doing the tagging and asked if they could join. At least that’s what I thought they said because it sounded like Brad Pitt’s character in the movie “Snatch.”